"If a butterfly flaps its wings in Finland..."
12 days ago: So I'm racing toward the jungle, riding on the back of a motorcycle driven by a Cambodian guy who I met less than an hour ago, and I'm carrying all of my possessions on my back while balancing the driver's hefty pack on my knees because he's got to drive and so forth, and we're racing along these bumpy dusty dirt roads with huge divots everywhere, full speed ahead and Jimi Hendrix is screaming something about some watch tower or something into my ears, and I've got a red bandanna tied around my face in such a fashion that the poor Cambodians we pass would assume I was a bandit about to rob a bank, that is, if they had any banks to rob up in these parts; although I'm not robbing any banks, I'm just trying to keep the dust out of my mouth because I wasn't provided a helmet for the ninety minute trip, but I'm not worried about damaging my brain and no longer being able to come up with captivating introductory run-on sentences for my blog because the back of my driver's helmet says "Lucky". And all I can think is: "Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet"
Soon we're speeding up river in a narrow wooden motor boat, the water line coming up within an inch of the side rails on our tiny vessel, my knees touching each side as I sit Indian style. I'm choosing this position not so much because of my 2 months in India but because there isn't really a choice, unless I want to break my current contract with the space-time continuum. My guide is seated inches in front of me, the motor boat operator inches behind me. Despite the boat operator's quiet insistence on blasting full speed ahead over any rapids, my bag (situated up front) miraculously manages to escape any splashes of water. I can't say the same for my butt. Luckily I'm wearing my trusty Thai fisherman's pants, which will easily dry off later.
We've got two hours still ahead of us, and since the motor directly behind me is ruling out the option of listening to the peaceful flow of the river, I risk my iPod's life and listen to the ultimate album for relaxing while experiencing reckless freedom: Bob Dylan's soundtrack to Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas takes care of the second hour. These two albums are probably top of the list for most played on my journey).
Eventually we see a group of Cambodian women and children bathing in the river while men stand on the shore. One of them is holding a live chicken in one hand and a machine gun in the other. My guide informs me that this is where we're getting out. It must be the village where we're staying the night, before heading into the jungle for three days and two nights on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Hopefully we find any left over land mines before they find us.
45 days ago: I'm sitting outside a bar in Bangkok, having arrived from India the night before. A German girl noticed me sitting alone reading Norwegian Wood (Murakami, great book) and invited me to join her and her new international acquaintances. There is a British guy seated across from me wearing a t-shirt that says "The Butterfly Effect". Also at our table are three people from Finland. Until now, I've never met anyone from Finland. After several beers, I explain to them that I find this all very interesting.
27 days ago: This guy is quickly becoming the first native of the Land of Smiles to really piss me off. I think my new British companion from the bus (Alex King, good British name) is thinking the same thing. First the Cambodian visa is US $25. But no, now we have to pay in Thai baht, the price of which is 1200, which is equal to about US $35. And of course I just changed all my money to American knowing that that's what they use in Cambodia. So we've got to get back into the tuk tuk to find an ATM, and bring all my stuff too because I'm not trusting it with these scam artists (then again, they already have my passport). When we get back and each give him 2000 baht expecting change, we only get 500 back. "You said 1200 baht!" "Oh, processing fee. Hurry, hurry!" And he's getting away with this because the border closes in less than an hour. And we're putting up with it because we don't realize that it'll take five seconds to actually get through customs and we're going to have 35 minutes to spare. Once we cross the border, a guy arranges for us to take a taxi with his friend, a 2 hour ride for $40. Alex has been living in Cambodia as a volunteer for 3 months and is just returning from a
short vacation in Thailand. He seems to think this price is fair, so I go along with it. We wait at a gas station for our driver to fill up, and it takes about 20 minutes. When he's finally done, our driver informs us that a different driver with a different car will be driving us. So we get into the new car, and he goes to a different gas station for some reason and also takes 20 minutes to fill up.
Cambodia better be worth it...
20 days ago: "Dun da-dun daaaa, dun-duh DA! Dun da-dun daaa, dun duh daa daa daaaa! (or however the Indiana Jones theme music is supposed to be written)". I leap through the small stone hole just in time, rolling out onto a pile of crumbled rocks. That was a close one. Somebody might have seen me crawling through the wall into a section of the temple that tourists aren't supposed to go to. And me making an ass of myself living out my childhood Indiana Jones fantasies. Technically, Tomb Raider fantasies would be more accurate because they filmed part of it here, but I never saw it and never really ran around my back yard in the suburbs of Long Island pretending to be Lara Croft when I was a kid. Unfortunately, there are no magic golden skulls or carelessly misplaced Arks of the Covenant lying around in this section. Just some construction vehicles. Wait! Perhaps they're ancient magical construction vehicles, that impart upon their discoverer the supernatural powers to construct anything, like, like, a giant...pizza, or something. But they look a little bulky to sneak through customs.
I'm in the Angkor temple complex, Cambodia's claim to fame. The mighty Angkor Wat, build by Hindus hundreds of years ago, is possibly the world's largest religious structure. It's on the Cambodian flag. I've devoted my Sunday to my personal religion of light-hearted adventure by going to ancient temples and seeking out valuable lost relics. So far I've only found giant tree roots growing over the walls and a few Buddhist monks who insist that I'm not allowed to take them home as souvenirs. Oh well. Awesome day, despite the 95 degree heat (33 for you Celsius people).
During 9 hours I visit four different temples. The crumbled rocks, jungle seclusion and steep climbs up dozens of steps make all of them ideal for feeling like you're on some important spiritual quest, even though you paid $20 to get in and there are plenty of white-haired couples with cameras being led around by tour guides saying "Ooh, isn't that lovely" who I don't recall being in any of the Indiana Jones movies (maybe the new one? I never saw it. Maybe that's why it got bad reviews...)
I watch the sun set and the moon rise behind the three pyramidesquish gopuras of Angkor Wat. Unfortunately I don't have much time to dance around singing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots this time because the temple closes soon after sun down.
3 days ago: Sooo weak. Soooooo tired. Can barely get out of bed. Trying not to scan photographic memory for Lonely Planet's list of major diseases to avoid and all of their symptoms. Just stay positive. I've been traveling too much, so I'm just tired, that's it. No regrets. Stay positive.
16 days ago: I'm in my tiny guest house room in Phnom Penh, the rickety fan my only salvation. My stomach has felt like it's been stabbed by knives from within whenever I'm hungry or whenever I eat. My neck is stiff on the left and the right. It's really hot. I miss everyone. I miss my cat, Bort. Muppet too. I miss not hearing the movie the Killing Fields blaring from the restaurant downstairs night after night, especially since I just saw the actual Killing Fields and am feeling guilty about my distaste for my discomfort (when you see a tree labeled "Killing Tree" where soldiers smashed children's heads by holding them by their feet and swinging them, right across from the "Magic Tree" where they hung a loudspeaker to drown out the sounds of the slaughter, you feel stupid for wanting to complain about anything). I wonder why I'm living on the road by myself and just what the hell I'm doing. This tends to happen every few weeks, and is mostly dependent on bodily discomfort.
Earlier in the day I'd done the touristy things in Phnom Penh, the nation's capital. Ya know, like visiting stacks of skulls and torture prisons run by the genocidal Khmer Rouge. And the royal palace, just to confirm my suspicion that I'm not really interested in things like palaces.
Now I'm trying to distract myself from my pain and the day's historic pain by immersing myself in *Into the Wild* by Jon Krakauer. I bought it at lunch that day from a kid who probably can't read because he needs to sell books to afford to go to school. For those who don't know (they made a movie recently), it's about a young man who gives away all of his money after graduating from college, hits the road and lives off the land or with strangers for two years. His big odyssey is to go into the Alaskan wilderness and live off the land alone. He makes it over 100 days but starves to death because he ate some bad seeds that the nature book didn't warn against. And I gotta say, I'm completely hooked on this book, and really spooked because I'm identifying with the main character on many levels. For example, here's a passage of his writing:
"I'd like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence
there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredibly beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances."
He wrote all of this to an 80 year old friend of his, so it comes off as a little naive and misguided in the context of the book, but I think it's great advice for any young person who isn't happy with the way things are going in their life. If they are happy, they should keep doing what they're doing because it's working. But too many people live with a dream deferred and say they're happy enough through weak smiles because they're scared to of the great unknown brought about by change. Like Dante in the movie Clerks. In short, I think Chris McCandless (dead guy) does a good job of explaining why I and so many other people are currently living the lifestyles that we do, even if we aren't picking berries and sleeping in tents by the road to get by. The message transcends the specifics of his hero journey. The magic fun time spin ball we all live on is full of entertaining and soul-enriching enterprises, waiting to be discovered for the first time again and again by each new adventurer. Boredom is a lame excuse for complaining about existence. There is simply too much to do here. Although, technically, you could always blame the butterflies for everything. They're my personal favorite scapegoat...
807 days ago: I begin my first attempt at a novel. I'm not sure what to talk about, but since I'm fascinated by mysterious coincidences and synchronicity and just did my laundry, I go off about missing socks and the Butterfly Effect, which claims that everything is interconnected and affects everything else. The famous idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings could cause a tornado thousands of miles away. For some reason I try to illustrate this by saying that "a butterfly flapping its wings in Finland could cause you to lose your socks wherever you happen to do your laundry."
24 days ago: I'm sitting at my guest house in Siem Reap, eating delicious chicken noodle soup and reading the Cambodian Lonely Planet. British and Irish home-building volunteers are chatting around the table (I met a friendly Brit my age named Alex on the bus from Bangkok; we got scammed at the border together and shared an ENORMOUS room for $3 each at the hotel where he and his fellow volunteers stayed). I'm flipping through the book and come across the section for Ratanakiri. It catches my eye because it has the words "amazing" and "adventure" scattered throughout. Cambodia's "Wild East". Excellent for hiking. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge hid out up there during the Cambodian civil war. And as much as the words "amazing" and "adventure" are catching my attention, I can't stop the words "land" and "mine" from trumping them. Cambodia is one of the most if not the most heavily land-mined nation on Earth, thanks to the Vietnamese. Ratanakiri is on the border of Vietnam and Laos. My brain is starting to toss out the whole idea when I look up at the British woman seated across from me. She's wearing a Family Guy shirt with Brian the dog on it saying "Don't Make Me Beg". I take this as a sign from God or impersonal deterministic chaos or Kermit the Frog or whatever that reality wants me to go hike in the jungle. I review my fortunate travels thus far: Mountains, check. Beaches and tropical islands, check. Crazy cities and temples, check. Jungle...very well, it shall be so. But I promise never to watch Family Guy again should I become an anachronistic casualty of the Vietnam War.
15 days ago: So yeah, this Into the Wild guy's fate in the wilderness has me more than a little disconcerted about my plans to hop on a 12 hour bus the next day and pay for 4 days of hiking in Virachay National Park. But I feel like it's calling me to experience it before it's gone. The area is fast disappearing due to logging and so forth. But then again, so are a lot of places I'll never go to. Suddenly, there's this voice in my head. And I don't know if it's the voice of God or Kermit the Frog or impersonal deterministic chaos or what, but I do know that it's very clearly calling me a wuss.
14 days ago: I'm on a 12 hour bus to Bang Lung, because no impersonal deterministic chaos calls me a wuss and gets away with it. I concede that God can call me whatever it wants, though.
12 days ago, again: We're at this village only reachable by a 2 hour motorboat ride on the river. I'm not the only Westerner here. There are two slightly older Swiss engineers, Patrick and Fabian, and an American professor of comparative literature, Eric. They signed up for the 3 day-2 night hike, so we'll be parting ways tomorrow morning, but tonight we all stay together in this village, which consists of eight
huts.
Earlier in the day we'd gotten to know each other over lunch in between our motor bike ride and the river boat ride. As we ate rice and vegetables, the Cambodians in the restaurant watched some "teen" talent show on TV where some tiny tiny boy was singing what could only be songs of seduction with women five times his height dancing sensually around him as he did all the gestures and hand motions to his heart that Luther Vandross might do. This is only further evidence for my theory that American Idol has truly ruined civilization as we know it.
We don't interact much with the villagers because we wouldn't have the faintest clue what we're saying to each other and our guides don't seem inclined to get us involved. This is fine with me, because I end up having my first great discussion about books in over 3 months. As a writer, I have to talk about books every so often or I start melting away and die. It's a scientific fact. Just look at what happened to the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Most people don't know this, but the whole reason she wanted to get Dorothy was because earlier in the plot she had been trying to discuss Catcher in the Rye with her. And since Dorothy was coming from Kansas where they can only achieve orgasm by banning brilliant books, she decided that anyone who reads books with naughty language must be "wicked" and had her teased by her peers until she had no choice but to live up to the name. Where was I? Oh yeah, books in the jungle.
To be honest, I didn't really expect to be discussing Hermann Hesse, Thomas Pynchon and Walt Whitman in the Cambodian jungle with a 42 year old professor who also happened to love discussing Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Grateful Dead. The four of us eat dinner on the porch of our hammock hall and watch the stars come out, the clearest I've seen them since I'd been in the Himalaya months before. I'm reminded that I'm floating on a magic fun time spin ball, and all is well with the cosmos. Meanwhile, the villagers are celebrating the birth of a child by getting drunk on rice wine and blaring Cambodian pop music. Our most intimate interaction occurs when an old woman stumbles over to us and motions that she wants to use our candle to light her tobacco pipe. We oblige, and she leans over to get her fix. Then she puts her hands together and bows to us, motioning she will be leaving. Then she asks to borrow a lighter, and a Swiss engineer obliges. Then the bowing. Then the candle again. It goes on like this. It must be some ancient ritual.
The next morning we are woken up by loud Cambodian pop music. My guide informs me that he wants to leave ahead of the other group and isn't clear about whether we'll meet up again. We don't, but luckily I will run into some of them at the hotel when I get back to exchange contact info. We take a 20 minute ride on a motor boat, wade through a river, and we're on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail isn't actually one trail. It splits off into many routes through Vietnam and Laos as well. Basically, it refers to any path taken by the Viet Cong to get supplies through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam during the war. Apparently there is the possibility of UXO's (unexploded ordnance) still in the area, so I'm not supposed to stray off the beaten path. Plus my guide is walking ahead of me, which is comforting. He seems like a nice guy, but I'm not really emotionally attached just yet. I'm also flanked by a local village guide who is wearing a shirt with some gangsta rapper and 100 dollar bills on it. We eat lunch by a stream and he catches fish to supplement the meal.
After only about 3 hours of hiking we camp by a quiet river, stringing up our army hammocks, fully equipped with mosquito nets. The mosquitoes aren't bad, but the flies are ferocious and have fallen in love with my forehead, so I spend a good chunk of the afternoon reading Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums (purchased for 3 dollars two days before) with my mosquito net zipped up.
By nightfall the flies retreat, so my guide and I sit by the fire and talk about our lives and so forth. I can't remember too much of what we talked about, but we had a surprisingly good conversation despite his limited grasp of my language. I told him that he was infinitely better at English than I was at speaking Khmer, and then attempted to explain the concept of infinity to him. At one point he throws his arm in front of me to push me back. An ordinary black ant is crawling my way. Or it appears ordinary. Apparently its bite hurts like Hell. After he goes to bed, I continue reading about Kerouac's Zen lunatic adventures, meditating in the woods and blessing all living things. Excerpt:
"This thinking has stopped" and I sighed because I didn't have to think any more and felt my whole body sink into a blessedness surely to be believed, completely relaxed and at peace with all the ephemeral world of dream and dreamer and the dreaming itself. All kinds of thoughts, too, like "One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls"
I put down the book, tell Angkor Wat to suck it, and breathe in the universe, sniffing the stars and exchanging atoms with the invisible water vapor that is playing hooky from river school to make love to my eyelids. The air is filled with the strange sound of guerrilla birds and crickets, just waiting for the right moment to exact a futile ambush of this itinerant American blogger, and the trees...well, they just stand there, too cool to be moved by some Beatnik, like always. I love my life.
I go to sleep to the sounds of rainfall. I realize then that it's not raining. My flashlight reveals that hordes of black ants are crawling beneath the leaves surrounding us. The resulting sound is similar to pouring rain. I don't care, because I'm raised up in my hammock.
10 days ago: I wake up early in the morning and have an irrepressible urge to pee. Getting out of a hammock with a mosquito net all groggy isn't an easy task, and neither is finding black sandals in the dark. To make it worse, the rain fall sound hasn't stopped, and it's not raining. F***!
God/Impersonal Deterministic Chaos: "Cue the excruciatingly painful zaps on Ben's feet!"
The ants! I go running (i.e. hopping from foot to foot like an idiot trying to keep my pants from falling down because I'd already untied them) away from my hammock to my usual peeing spot, but the ants have it surrounded. Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Mother******* s*** b**** Dan Rather a*****. I find a spot near the river not covered by ants and relieve one kind of pain. I try to go back to my hammock, but the ants keep biting my feet, so I luckily find my socks on top of my bag and retreat to my river bank. The crescent moon is smiling at me. Or laughing at me. I curse all butterflies everywhere, even though I found my socks.
I try to go back to sleep after rubbing anti-histamine on my feet, but soon the sun comes up and day 3 has begun.
We hike for about 4 hours again, involving one 400 meter ascent of a mountain and a photo op with old rusted machine guns and bazookas left over from the war. We're an hour away from our next camp site when the sound of rain smacking against leaves fills our ears. This time, there are no ants. My guide tells me this is the first rain fall of the year. Just my luck. Well, I think that at first, but then I realize that it's actually great luck. After all, I came to see the rain forest, didn't I? Everything was drier and deader than I expected, so at least there's a little extra element of adventure now. Besides, I've got a poncho.
We set up camp near another river, the rain having ceased just prior to our arrival. After dinner I re-read sections of Into the Wild by candlelight. I had ridiculous amounts of fun walking through the jungle today. Many times my guides kept saying "this is where we take a break" and "are you tired? do you need a break?", and I didn't need a break. My body was remembering my hike in the Himalaya and was laughing at this 400 meter mountain with less weight on my back. But this time they were carrying more than I was, so I didn't say anything. Only smiled.
My guide had warned of more rain during the night, but I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of wind blowing through the trees. It's the sound of a universe that is more alive than we can possibly imagine. I remember this sound from home, during afternoon walks in the woods in March, the winds of seasonal change testing to see if you're going to get scared and run inside or if you're actually awesome enough to just sit there and enjoy it for God's sake (or Kermit the Frog's sake). It's the second most beautiful sound in existence, after a woman laughing (it's a scientific fact). I go to pee and can see that the stars have taken over the sky, which they don't get to do so often in the places where most of the intelligent beings tend to congregate on this magic fun time spin ball. I can't get that Kermit the Frog song from the Muppet Movie out of my head. Rainbow Connection :
Laugh if you want (it's good for you), but that really was the best song that God/IDC/Kermit the Frog could have put in my groggy brain when it woke me up to pee just then.
9 days ago: We only have to hike for about two hours today. It's still windy, which has been rare in all of my Asian travels. At one point I get an awesome clear view of the park from a small hill. We end the hiking portion of our trek by a river bank and the guides cook food (9th straight pork/rice/vegetable stir fry). Although I'm tired from the 4-5 hours of hammock sleep per night, I feel relaxed and spiritually renewed after all of those depressing fields outside Phnom Penh with the killing in them. The wind howls like mad at times, filling me with an insatiable urge to go to China. I'll explain that last part if I actually end up in China.
When our boat finally arrives and we're zooming past the trees, the evil ants and the unexploded land mines, a few of Kerouac’s words from the night before circle round the circuits of my brain:
"colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the
ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless crapulous civilization."
I know I'll use that in my blog when I finally settle down and write it, but then I think I don't want to offend any of my readers or give them the wrong idea. After all, I don't believe that colleges are just grooming schools for having a non-identity (this was written back in the mostly conformist 1950's), especially because a large part of my identity comes from the experiences I had with my friends at college. And television isn't inherently evil (doing nothing but watching television is, in my take-it-or-leave it opinion), as some of the most inspiring beautiful moments of my life have come while sitting in a safe warm living room watching amazing imagination on a box with friends or family, the smell of freshly cut grass blowing in through the windows, and looking forward to trying to outquote my friends over that night's new episode of The Simpsons the next day at school, because I knew they were all watching the same thing. That's magic too, just a different form, and it all was born millions of years ago in the oceans and forests. Another Kerouac quote from Dharma Bums comes to mind, referring to this Japhy character, who seems to live his life awesomely but is too bothered by how other people carry out their lives:
"Why is he so mad about white tiled sinks and 'kitchen machinery' he calls it? People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism."
Even though I'm somewhat bothered by the fact that many humans suffer from the tyranny of the dull mind, fail to reach the limits of their potential imagination and simply swallow the lowest common denominator, night after night (not to mention 5 year old's on TV pretending to be Kanye West), the fact is that none of the people I love or share time with on the magic fun time spin ball really fit that description, so most of the time it doesn't bother. And in the end, as long as I don't become something that I don't want to be, that's what matters to me. If someone out there is born to be a lazy couch potato, then they should play their part. Also, I've definitely indulged in couch potatoism in my time. I'm sure more people would enjoy prowling around the wilderness if God/IDC/Kermit the Frog carried them there during their personal journeys through life. And to be extra fair, I'm looking forward to civilization after three nights of hammock sleep and ant bite feet.
I guess what makes me sad is that most people only interact with the natural wilderness via the Discovery Channel, and it's so distant to their reality that when it comes to serious problems like protecting these environments that spawned us in the first place (trees are the magic spin ball's lungs, for crying out loud!), that they don't care, because it's not part of their reality. Maybe if we hooked up speakers to trees and played sappy love songs and let people vote for which one they thought was the best....
I break from these disgruntled thoughts and remember the Butterfly Effect and the interconnectedness of all things. If people didn't care more about other people singing the same damn things to the same damn beats over and over again than they cared about the wilderness, then there would probably be more people in the wilderness, hindering my ability to get away from it all (they'd probably bring their boom boxes), and that butterfly wouldn't have flapped its wings to propel me here. Even so, it's sad that the loggers will whisk this all away in a few years...as a paper-loving writer, I feel partly responsible. Oh well. Qu'est sera sera.
The river ride takes 2 hours once again, and this time my back reallly doesn't appreciate the enforced lotus position. The motorcycle ride is less exhilarating this time around, but at least I earned a helmet.
I bid my guide farewell at my hotel, and take my first shower after four days of jungle hiking in 95 degree heat. At night, I meet a rare fellow American traveler (6 total after almost 4 months) who just came from Vietnam and China, and has lots of great things to say about both. It's a rare crisp windy night in Cambodia.
The next morning I'm back on that 12 hour bus to Phnom Penh, but my hotel room is better this time around. I wait a day to get my Vietnamese visa and my laundry. It turns out I've made my first contact on couchsurfing.org, and he and his friends can take me out on the town my last night before leaving the country. It turns out they're gay, which I deduce when I awkwardly show up to what turned out to be the gay bar they invited me to and they're not there yet. After 30 minutes they show up, and they're gracious hosts and bent on making sure I enjoy my time in their city (even though they're from the Philippines). We go to have drinks outside a bar along the riverfront. Then, I guess as some sort of compromise, they decide to take me to a drag show at a gay bar and then a bar called Heart of Darkness. One of my companions tells me he likes to call it "The Heart of Hell" (Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey section about magical helpers warning you about the dangers ahead comes to my mind). As soon as I enter, a scorching woman from Ghana immediately approaches me, runs her hands through my hair and says she likes me and wants to go to my hotel. This doesn't usually happen to me when I go to bars, and when two more women do the same thing, I put two and two together. The club is blaring MGMT's Kids: "control yourself, take only what you need from it, to be haunted..." Luckily for my personal sexual morality, I've got three countries to visit and a tight budget, so the night's odyssey ends alone in my hotel room, with Ulysses tied to the mast. This time, God/Impersonal Determinist Chaos isn't calling me a wuss.
By the way, if you do want to have some fun and your differing ideals which you are totally entitled to permit you to do so, feel free to go to the Heart of Darkness in Phnom Penh. At least these girls work their voluntarily, as opposed to their kidnapped counterparts in many Asian "girl bars".
Earlier in the night, my hosts told me how lucky I was to be traveling as much as I am, and I completely agreed with them. I feel lucky about everything in my life. I tried to explain to them that not all Americans have this opportunity, and that European societies seem to be much more structured in favor of allowing their citizens to explore the world, that it's not about being a "rich American". I also explain that I did have to sacrifice and work hard to make this trip happen, and I don't know when I'll be able to do it again after it's over. But I know what they mean, having seen countless natives of these lands that I'm wandering freely about who have never even been further than their neighboring town, let alone the other side of the world.
But somebody's got to enjoy what life's got to offer, and we'd all be offending the universe more by not seizing hold of the unique opportunities it presents to us. Play your part as well as you can. Hopefully it involves a walk in the woods some time...
5 days ago: I spend the morning reading over a story I wrote last year about coincidences. Heading back to my guest house (through a series of confusing alleyways), I see a girl who looks strangely familiar, and I can see she thinks the same about me. I ask her where she's from. Finland. Bingo. She was one of the three Finns at the table in Bangkok with The Butterfly Effect t-shirt guy. I go upstairs to hang out at her place, and one of the other Finn guys steps out of the bathroom and immediately recognizes me. We spend the day drinking incredibly inexpensive beer, leafing through China and Vietnam Lonely Planet guides and attempting to belt out traveling love songs on his miniature acoustic guitar.
The last three days: I lie in my bed in Dalat for five hours each afternoon, both napping and listening to music, telling myself that I'm just tired and not sick.
Last night: I go to the Peace Hotel, where I've been eating all of my meals in between naps. All the backpackers tend to end up there. On this night, my Finnish friend is there, not a huge surprise as we discussed our future travel plans in Saigon. At one point he drunkenly heaves my copy of On the Road across the room because I'm not hitchhiking around America right now, or something. Even though I've read it years ago, I need it back because I've been using it as an address book for people I meet in the restaurant. Soon it's being passed around and other people are tearing off blank pages at the end to exchange contact info with each other. I get the book back, and know that I'll be keeping this copy for a long time.
A few seconds ago: I read over this entry, and those last three days of extreme fatigue start to make sense. Even so, I still hope to have the strength to celebrate the first day of spring by climbing a nearby mountain.
Now: I look to my left. I see construction, scaffolding, sparks and motorbike after motorbike zooming by. I think of my last day in the jungle, sitting by the river, watching butterflies float by, their wings supposedly orchestrating the symphonies of our lives.
I wonder if my Finnish friend just lost a sock.
12 days ago: So I'm racing toward the jungle, riding on the back of a motorcycle driven by a Cambodian guy who I met less than an hour ago, and I'm carrying all of my possessions on my back while balancing the driver's hefty pack on my knees because he's got to drive and so forth, and we're racing along these bumpy dusty dirt roads with huge divots everywhere, full speed ahead and Jimi Hendrix is screaming something about some watch tower or something into my ears, and I've got a red bandanna tied around my face in such a fashion that the poor Cambodians we pass would assume I was a bandit about to rob a bank, that is, if they had any banks to rob up in these parts; although I'm not robbing any banks, I'm just trying to keep the dust out of my mouth because I wasn't provided a helmet for the ninety minute trip, but I'm not worried about damaging my brain and no longer being able to come up with captivating introductory run-on sentences for my blog because the back of my driver's helmet says "Lucky". And all I can think is: "Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet"
Soon we're speeding up river in a narrow wooden motor boat, the water line coming up within an inch of the side rails on our tiny vessel, my knees touching each side as I sit Indian style. I'm choosing this position not so much because of my 2 months in India but because there isn't really a choice, unless I want to break my current contract with the space-time continuum. My guide is seated inches in front of me, the motor boat operator inches behind me. Despite the boat operator's quiet insistence on blasting full speed ahead over any rapids, my bag (situated up front) miraculously manages to escape any splashes of water. I can't say the same for my butt. Luckily I'm wearing my trusty Thai fisherman's pants, which will easily dry off later.
We've got two hours still ahead of us, and since the motor directly behind me is ruling out the option of listening to the peaceful flow of the river, I risk my iPod's life and listen to the ultimate album for relaxing while experiencing reckless freedom: Bob Dylan's soundtrack to Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas takes care of the second hour. These two albums are probably top of the list for most played on my journey).
Eventually we see a group of Cambodian women and children bathing in the river while men stand on the shore. One of them is holding a live chicken in one hand and a machine gun in the other. My guide informs me that this is where we're getting out. It must be the village where we're staying the night, before heading into the jungle for three days and two nights on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Hopefully we find any left over land mines before they find us.
45 days ago: I'm sitting outside a bar in Bangkok, having arrived from India the night before. A German girl noticed me sitting alone reading Norwegian Wood (Murakami, great book) and invited me to join her and her new international acquaintances. There is a British guy seated across from me wearing a t-shirt that says "The Butterfly Effect". Also at our table are three people from Finland. Until now, I've never met anyone from Finland. After several beers, I explain to them that I find this all very interesting.
27 days ago: This guy is quickly becoming the first native of the Land of Smiles to really piss me off. I think my new British companion from the bus (Alex King, good British name) is thinking the same thing. First the Cambodian visa is US $25. But no, now we have to pay in Thai baht, the price of which is 1200, which is equal to about US $35. And of course I just changed all my money to American knowing that that's what they use in Cambodia. So we've got to get back into the tuk tuk to find an ATM, and bring all my stuff too because I'm not trusting it with these scam artists (then again, they already have my passport). When we get back and each give him 2000 baht expecting change, we only get 500 back. "You said 1200 baht!" "Oh, processing fee. Hurry, hurry!" And he's getting away with this because the border closes in less than an hour. And we're putting up with it because we don't realize that it'll take five seconds to actually get through customs and we're going to have 35 minutes to spare. Once we cross the border, a guy arranges for us to take a taxi with his friend, a 2 hour ride for $40. Alex has been living in Cambodia as a volunteer for 3 months and is just returning from a
short vacation in Thailand. He seems to think this price is fair, so I go along with it. We wait at a gas station for our driver to fill up, and it takes about 20 minutes. When he's finally done, our driver informs us that a different driver with a different car will be driving us. So we get into the new car, and he goes to a different gas station for some reason and also takes 20 minutes to fill up.
Cambodia better be worth it...
20 days ago: "Dun da-dun daaaa, dun-duh DA! Dun da-dun daaa, dun duh daa daa daaaa! (or however the Indiana Jones theme music is supposed to be written)". I leap through the small stone hole just in time, rolling out onto a pile of crumbled rocks. That was a close one. Somebody might have seen me crawling through the wall into a section of the temple that tourists aren't supposed to go to. And me making an ass of myself living out my childhood Indiana Jones fantasies. Technically, Tomb Raider fantasies would be more accurate because they filmed part of it here, but I never saw it and never really ran around my back yard in the suburbs of Long Island pretending to be Lara Croft when I was a kid. Unfortunately, there are no magic golden skulls or carelessly misplaced Arks of the Covenant lying around in this section. Just some construction vehicles. Wait! Perhaps they're ancient magical construction vehicles, that impart upon their discoverer the supernatural powers to construct anything, like, like, a giant...pizza, or something. But they look a little bulky to sneak through customs.
I'm in the Angkor temple complex, Cambodia's claim to fame. The mighty Angkor Wat, build by Hindus hundreds of years ago, is possibly the world's largest religious structure. It's on the Cambodian flag. I've devoted my Sunday to my personal religion of light-hearted adventure by going to ancient temples and seeking out valuable lost relics. So far I've only found giant tree roots growing over the walls and a few Buddhist monks who insist that I'm not allowed to take them home as souvenirs. Oh well. Awesome day, despite the 95 degree heat (33 for you Celsius people).
During 9 hours I visit four different temples. The crumbled rocks, jungle seclusion and steep climbs up dozens of steps make all of them ideal for feeling like you're on some important spiritual quest, even though you paid $20 to get in and there are plenty of white-haired couples with cameras being led around by tour guides saying "Ooh, isn't that lovely" who I don't recall being in any of the Indiana Jones movies (maybe the new one? I never saw it. Maybe that's why it got bad reviews...)
I watch the sun set and the moon rise behind the three pyramidesquish gopuras of Angkor Wat. Unfortunately I don't have much time to dance around singing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots this time because the temple closes soon after sun down.
3 days ago: Sooo weak. Soooooo tired. Can barely get out of bed. Trying not to scan photographic memory for Lonely Planet's list of major diseases to avoid and all of their symptoms. Just stay positive. I've been traveling too much, so I'm just tired, that's it. No regrets. Stay positive.
16 days ago: I'm in my tiny guest house room in Phnom Penh, the rickety fan my only salvation. My stomach has felt like it's been stabbed by knives from within whenever I'm hungry or whenever I eat. My neck is stiff on the left and the right. It's really hot. I miss everyone. I miss my cat, Bort. Muppet too. I miss not hearing the movie the Killing Fields blaring from the restaurant downstairs night after night, especially since I just saw the actual Killing Fields and am feeling guilty about my distaste for my discomfort (when you see a tree labeled "Killing Tree" where soldiers smashed children's heads by holding them by their feet and swinging them, right across from the "Magic Tree" where they hung a loudspeaker to drown out the sounds of the slaughter, you feel stupid for wanting to complain about anything). I wonder why I'm living on the road by myself and just what the hell I'm doing. This tends to happen every few weeks, and is mostly dependent on bodily discomfort.
Earlier in the day I'd done the touristy things in Phnom Penh, the nation's capital. Ya know, like visiting stacks of skulls and torture prisons run by the genocidal Khmer Rouge. And the royal palace, just to confirm my suspicion that I'm not really interested in things like palaces.
Now I'm trying to distract myself from my pain and the day's historic pain by immersing myself in *Into the Wild* by Jon Krakauer. I bought it at lunch that day from a kid who probably can't read because he needs to sell books to afford to go to school. For those who don't know (they made a movie recently), it's about a young man who gives away all of his money after graduating from college, hits the road and lives off the land or with strangers for two years. His big odyssey is to go into the Alaskan wilderness and live off the land alone. He makes it over 100 days but starves to death because he ate some bad seeds that the nature book didn't warn against. And I gotta say, I'm completely hooked on this book, and really spooked because I'm identifying with the main character on many levels. For example, here's a passage of his writing:
"I'd like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence
there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredibly beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances."
He wrote all of this to an 80 year old friend of his, so it comes off as a little naive and misguided in the context of the book, but I think it's great advice for any young person who isn't happy with the way things are going in their life. If they are happy, they should keep doing what they're doing because it's working. But too many people live with a dream deferred and say they're happy enough through weak smiles because they're scared to of the great unknown brought about by change. Like Dante in the movie Clerks. In short, I think Chris McCandless (dead guy) does a good job of explaining why I and so many other people are currently living the lifestyles that we do, even if we aren't picking berries and sleeping in tents by the road to get by. The message transcends the specifics of his hero journey. The magic fun time spin ball we all live on is full of entertaining and soul-enriching enterprises, waiting to be discovered for the first time again and again by each new adventurer. Boredom is a lame excuse for complaining about existence. There is simply too much to do here. Although, technically, you could always blame the butterflies for everything. They're my personal favorite scapegoat...
807 days ago: I begin my first attempt at a novel. I'm not sure what to talk about, but since I'm fascinated by mysterious coincidences and synchronicity and just did my laundry, I go off about missing socks and the Butterfly Effect, which claims that everything is interconnected and affects everything else. The famous idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings could cause a tornado thousands of miles away. For some reason I try to illustrate this by saying that "a butterfly flapping its wings in Finland could cause you to lose your socks wherever you happen to do your laundry."
24 days ago: I'm sitting at my guest house in Siem Reap, eating delicious chicken noodle soup and reading the Cambodian Lonely Planet. British and Irish home-building volunteers are chatting around the table (I met a friendly Brit my age named Alex on the bus from Bangkok; we got scammed at the border together and shared an ENORMOUS room for $3 each at the hotel where he and his fellow volunteers stayed). I'm flipping through the book and come across the section for Ratanakiri. It catches my eye because it has the words "amazing" and "adventure" scattered throughout. Cambodia's "Wild East". Excellent for hiking. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge hid out up there during the Cambodian civil war. And as much as the words "amazing" and "adventure" are catching my attention, I can't stop the words "land" and "mine" from trumping them. Cambodia is one of the most if not the most heavily land-mined nation on Earth, thanks to the Vietnamese. Ratanakiri is on the border of Vietnam and Laos. My brain is starting to toss out the whole idea when I look up at the British woman seated across from me. She's wearing a Family Guy shirt with Brian the dog on it saying "Don't Make Me Beg". I take this as a sign from God or impersonal deterministic chaos or Kermit the Frog or whatever that reality wants me to go hike in the jungle. I review my fortunate travels thus far: Mountains, check. Beaches and tropical islands, check. Crazy cities and temples, check. Jungle...very well, it shall be so. But I promise never to watch Family Guy again should I become an anachronistic casualty of the Vietnam War.
15 days ago: So yeah, this Into the Wild guy's fate in the wilderness has me more than a little disconcerted about my plans to hop on a 12 hour bus the next day and pay for 4 days of hiking in Virachay National Park. But I feel like it's calling me to experience it before it's gone. The area is fast disappearing due to logging and so forth. But then again, so are a lot of places I'll never go to. Suddenly, there's this voice in my head. And I don't know if it's the voice of God or Kermit the Frog or impersonal deterministic chaos or what, but I do know that it's very clearly calling me a wuss.
14 days ago: I'm on a 12 hour bus to Bang Lung, because no impersonal deterministic chaos calls me a wuss and gets away with it. I concede that God can call me whatever it wants, though.
12 days ago, again: We're at this village only reachable by a 2 hour motorboat ride on the river. I'm not the only Westerner here. There are two slightly older Swiss engineers, Patrick and Fabian, and an American professor of comparative literature, Eric. They signed up for the 3 day-2 night hike, so we'll be parting ways tomorrow morning, but tonight we all stay together in this village, which consists of eight
huts.
Earlier in the day we'd gotten to know each other over lunch in between our motor bike ride and the river boat ride. As we ate rice and vegetables, the Cambodians in the restaurant watched some "teen" talent show on TV where some tiny tiny boy was singing what could only be songs of seduction with women five times his height dancing sensually around him as he did all the gestures and hand motions to his heart that Luther Vandross might do. This is only further evidence for my theory that American Idol has truly ruined civilization as we know it.
We don't interact much with the villagers because we wouldn't have the faintest clue what we're saying to each other and our guides don't seem inclined to get us involved. This is fine with me, because I end up having my first great discussion about books in over 3 months. As a writer, I have to talk about books every so often or I start melting away and die. It's a scientific fact. Just look at what happened to the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Most people don't know this, but the whole reason she wanted to get Dorothy was because earlier in the plot she had been trying to discuss Catcher in the Rye with her. And since Dorothy was coming from Kansas where they can only achieve orgasm by banning brilliant books, she decided that anyone who reads books with naughty language must be "wicked" and had her teased by her peers until she had no choice but to live up to the name. Where was I? Oh yeah, books in the jungle.
To be honest, I didn't really expect to be discussing Hermann Hesse, Thomas Pynchon and Walt Whitman in the Cambodian jungle with a 42 year old professor who also happened to love discussing Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Grateful Dead. The four of us eat dinner on the porch of our hammock hall and watch the stars come out, the clearest I've seen them since I'd been in the Himalaya months before. I'm reminded that I'm floating on a magic fun time spin ball, and all is well with the cosmos. Meanwhile, the villagers are celebrating the birth of a child by getting drunk on rice wine and blaring Cambodian pop music. Our most intimate interaction occurs when an old woman stumbles over to us and motions that she wants to use our candle to light her tobacco pipe. We oblige, and she leans over to get her fix. Then she puts her hands together and bows to us, motioning she will be leaving. Then she asks to borrow a lighter, and a Swiss engineer obliges. Then the bowing. Then the candle again. It goes on like this. It must be some ancient ritual.
The next morning we are woken up by loud Cambodian pop music. My guide informs me that he wants to leave ahead of the other group and isn't clear about whether we'll meet up again. We don't, but luckily I will run into some of them at the hotel when I get back to exchange contact info. We take a 20 minute ride on a motor boat, wade through a river, and we're on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail isn't actually one trail. It splits off into many routes through Vietnam and Laos as well. Basically, it refers to any path taken by the Viet Cong to get supplies through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam during the war. Apparently there is the possibility of UXO's (unexploded ordnance) still in the area, so I'm not supposed to stray off the beaten path. Plus my guide is walking ahead of me, which is comforting. He seems like a nice guy, but I'm not really emotionally attached just yet. I'm also flanked by a local village guide who is wearing a shirt with some gangsta rapper and 100 dollar bills on it. We eat lunch by a stream and he catches fish to supplement the meal.
After only about 3 hours of hiking we camp by a quiet river, stringing up our army hammocks, fully equipped with mosquito nets. The mosquitoes aren't bad, but the flies are ferocious and have fallen in love with my forehead, so I spend a good chunk of the afternoon reading Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums (purchased for 3 dollars two days before) with my mosquito net zipped up.
By nightfall the flies retreat, so my guide and I sit by the fire and talk about our lives and so forth. I can't remember too much of what we talked about, but we had a surprisingly good conversation despite his limited grasp of my language. I told him that he was infinitely better at English than I was at speaking Khmer, and then attempted to explain the concept of infinity to him. At one point he throws his arm in front of me to push me back. An ordinary black ant is crawling my way. Or it appears ordinary. Apparently its bite hurts like Hell. After he goes to bed, I continue reading about Kerouac's Zen lunatic adventures, meditating in the woods and blessing all living things. Excerpt:
"This thinking has stopped" and I sighed because I didn't have to think any more and felt my whole body sink into a blessedness surely to be believed, completely relaxed and at peace with all the ephemeral world of dream and dreamer and the dreaming itself. All kinds of thoughts, too, like "One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls"
I put down the book, tell Angkor Wat to suck it, and breathe in the universe, sniffing the stars and exchanging atoms with the invisible water vapor that is playing hooky from river school to make love to my eyelids. The air is filled with the strange sound of guerrilla birds and crickets, just waiting for the right moment to exact a futile ambush of this itinerant American blogger, and the trees...well, they just stand there, too cool to be moved by some Beatnik, like always. I love my life.
I go to sleep to the sounds of rainfall. I realize then that it's not raining. My flashlight reveals that hordes of black ants are crawling beneath the leaves surrounding us. The resulting sound is similar to pouring rain. I don't care, because I'm raised up in my hammock.
10 days ago: I wake up early in the morning and have an irrepressible urge to pee. Getting out of a hammock with a mosquito net all groggy isn't an easy task, and neither is finding black sandals in the dark. To make it worse, the rain fall sound hasn't stopped, and it's not raining. F***!
God/Impersonal Deterministic Chaos: "Cue the excruciatingly painful zaps on Ben's feet!"
The ants! I go running (i.e. hopping from foot to foot like an idiot trying to keep my pants from falling down because I'd already untied them) away from my hammock to my usual peeing spot, but the ants have it surrounded. Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Mother******* s*** b**** Dan Rather a*****. I find a spot near the river not covered by ants and relieve one kind of pain. I try to go back to my hammock, but the ants keep biting my feet, so I luckily find my socks on top of my bag and retreat to my river bank. The crescent moon is smiling at me. Or laughing at me. I curse all butterflies everywhere, even though I found my socks.
I try to go back to sleep after rubbing anti-histamine on my feet, but soon the sun comes up and day 3 has begun.
We hike for about 4 hours again, involving one 400 meter ascent of a mountain and a photo op with old rusted machine guns and bazookas left over from the war. We're an hour away from our next camp site when the sound of rain smacking against leaves fills our ears. This time, there are no ants. My guide tells me this is the first rain fall of the year. Just my luck. Well, I think that at first, but then I realize that it's actually great luck. After all, I came to see the rain forest, didn't I? Everything was drier and deader than I expected, so at least there's a little extra element of adventure now. Besides, I've got a poncho.
We set up camp near another river, the rain having ceased just prior to our arrival. After dinner I re-read sections of Into the Wild by candlelight. I had ridiculous amounts of fun walking through the jungle today. Many times my guides kept saying "this is where we take a break" and "are you tired? do you need a break?", and I didn't need a break. My body was remembering my hike in the Himalaya and was laughing at this 400 meter mountain with less weight on my back. But this time they were carrying more than I was, so I didn't say anything. Only smiled.
My guide had warned of more rain during the night, but I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of wind blowing through the trees. It's the sound of a universe that is more alive than we can possibly imagine. I remember this sound from home, during afternoon walks in the woods in March, the winds of seasonal change testing to see if you're going to get scared and run inside or if you're actually awesome enough to just sit there and enjoy it for God's sake (or Kermit the Frog's sake). It's the second most beautiful sound in existence, after a woman laughing (it's a scientific fact). I go to pee and can see that the stars have taken over the sky, which they don't get to do so often in the places where most of the intelligent beings tend to congregate on this magic fun time spin ball. I can't get that Kermit the Frog song from the Muppet Movie out of my head. Rainbow Connection :
"What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see.
Some day we'll find it,
the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me,
Alllll of us un-der it's spell
We know that it's pro-bab-ly maaaa-gic."
Laugh if you want (it's good for you), but that really was the best song that God/IDC/Kermit the Frog could have put in my groggy brain when it woke me up to pee just then.
9 days ago: We only have to hike for about two hours today. It's still windy, which has been rare in all of my Asian travels. At one point I get an awesome clear view of the park from a small hill. We end the hiking portion of our trek by a river bank and the guides cook food (9th straight pork/rice/vegetable stir fry). Although I'm tired from the 4-5 hours of hammock sleep per night, I feel relaxed and spiritually renewed after all of those depressing fields outside Phnom Penh with the killing in them. The wind howls like mad at times, filling me with an insatiable urge to go to China. I'll explain that last part if I actually end up in China.
When our boat finally arrives and we're zooming past the trees, the evil ants and the unexploded land mines, a few of Kerouac’s words from the night before circle round the circuits of my brain:
"colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the
ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless crapulous civilization."
I know I'll use that in my blog when I finally settle down and write it, but then I think I don't want to offend any of my readers or give them the wrong idea. After all, I don't believe that colleges are just grooming schools for having a non-identity (this was written back in the mostly conformist 1950's), especially because a large part of my identity comes from the experiences I had with my friends at college. And television isn't inherently evil (doing nothing but watching television is, in my take-it-or-leave it opinion), as some of the most inspiring beautiful moments of my life have come while sitting in a safe warm living room watching amazing imagination on a box with friends or family, the smell of freshly cut grass blowing in through the windows, and looking forward to trying to outquote my friends over that night's new episode of The Simpsons the next day at school, because I knew they were all watching the same thing. That's magic too, just a different form, and it all was born millions of years ago in the oceans and forests. Another Kerouac quote from Dharma Bums comes to mind, referring to this Japhy character, who seems to live his life awesomely but is too bothered by how other people carry out their lives:
"Why is he so mad about white tiled sinks and 'kitchen machinery' he calls it? People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism."
Even though I'm somewhat bothered by the fact that many humans suffer from the tyranny of the dull mind, fail to reach the limits of their potential imagination and simply swallow the lowest common denominator, night after night (not to mention 5 year old's on TV pretending to be Kanye West), the fact is that none of the people I love or share time with on the magic fun time spin ball really fit that description, so most of the time it doesn't bother. And in the end, as long as I don't become something that I don't want to be, that's what matters to me. If someone out there is born to be a lazy couch potato, then they should play their part. Also, I've definitely indulged in couch potatoism in my time. I'm sure more people would enjoy prowling around the wilderness if God/IDC/Kermit the Frog carried them there during their personal journeys through life. And to be extra fair, I'm looking forward to civilization after three nights of hammock sleep and ant bite feet.
I guess what makes me sad is that most people only interact with the natural wilderness via the Discovery Channel, and it's so distant to their reality that when it comes to serious problems like protecting these environments that spawned us in the first place (trees are the magic spin ball's lungs, for crying out loud!), that they don't care, because it's not part of their reality. Maybe if we hooked up speakers to trees and played sappy love songs and let people vote for which one they thought was the best....
I break from these disgruntled thoughts and remember the Butterfly Effect and the interconnectedness of all things. If people didn't care more about other people singing the same damn things to the same damn beats over and over again than they cared about the wilderness, then there would probably be more people in the wilderness, hindering my ability to get away from it all (they'd probably bring their boom boxes), and that butterfly wouldn't have flapped its wings to propel me here. Even so, it's sad that the loggers will whisk this all away in a few years...as a paper-loving writer, I feel partly responsible. Oh well. Qu'est sera sera.
The river ride takes 2 hours once again, and this time my back reallly doesn't appreciate the enforced lotus position. The motorcycle ride is less exhilarating this time around, but at least I earned a helmet.
I bid my guide farewell at my hotel, and take my first shower after four days of jungle hiking in 95 degree heat. At night, I meet a rare fellow American traveler (6 total after almost 4 months) who just came from Vietnam and China, and has lots of great things to say about both. It's a rare crisp windy night in Cambodia.
The next morning I'm back on that 12 hour bus to Phnom Penh, but my hotel room is better this time around. I wait a day to get my Vietnamese visa and my laundry. It turns out I've made my first contact on couchsurfing.org, and he and his friends can take me out on the town my last night before leaving the country. It turns out they're gay, which I deduce when I awkwardly show up to what turned out to be the gay bar they invited me to and they're not there yet. After 30 minutes they show up, and they're gracious hosts and bent on making sure I enjoy my time in their city (even though they're from the Philippines). We go to have drinks outside a bar along the riverfront. Then, I guess as some sort of compromise, they decide to take me to a drag show at a gay bar and then a bar called Heart of Darkness. One of my companions tells me he likes to call it "The Heart of Hell" (Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey section about magical helpers warning you about the dangers ahead comes to my mind). As soon as I enter, a scorching woman from Ghana immediately approaches me, runs her hands through my hair and says she likes me and wants to go to my hotel. This doesn't usually happen to me when I go to bars, and when two more women do the same thing, I put two and two together. The club is blaring MGMT's Kids: "control yourself, take only what you need from it, to be haunted..." Luckily for my personal sexual morality, I've got three countries to visit and a tight budget, so the night's odyssey ends alone in my hotel room, with Ulysses tied to the mast. This time, God/Impersonal Determinist Chaos isn't calling me a wuss.
By the way, if you do want to have some fun and your differing ideals which you are totally entitled to permit you to do so, feel free to go to the Heart of Darkness in Phnom Penh. At least these girls work their voluntarily, as opposed to their kidnapped counterparts in many Asian "girl bars".
Earlier in the night, my hosts told me how lucky I was to be traveling as much as I am, and I completely agreed with them. I feel lucky about everything in my life. I tried to explain to them that not all Americans have this opportunity, and that European societies seem to be much more structured in favor of allowing their citizens to explore the world, that it's not about being a "rich American". I also explain that I did have to sacrifice and work hard to make this trip happen, and I don't know when I'll be able to do it again after it's over. But I know what they mean, having seen countless natives of these lands that I'm wandering freely about who have never even been further than their neighboring town, let alone the other side of the world.
But somebody's got to enjoy what life's got to offer, and we'd all be offending the universe more by not seizing hold of the unique opportunities it presents to us. Play your part as well as you can. Hopefully it involves a walk in the woods some time...
5 days ago: I spend the morning reading over a story I wrote last year about coincidences. Heading back to my guest house (through a series of confusing alleyways), I see a girl who looks strangely familiar, and I can see she thinks the same about me. I ask her where she's from. Finland. Bingo. She was one of the three Finns at the table in Bangkok with The Butterfly Effect t-shirt guy. I go upstairs to hang out at her place, and one of the other Finn guys steps out of the bathroom and immediately recognizes me. We spend the day drinking incredibly inexpensive beer, leafing through China and Vietnam Lonely Planet guides and attempting to belt out traveling love songs on his miniature acoustic guitar.
The last three days: I lie in my bed in Dalat for five hours each afternoon, both napping and listening to music, telling myself that I'm just tired and not sick.
Last night: I go to the Peace Hotel, where I've been eating all of my meals in between naps. All the backpackers tend to end up there. On this night, my Finnish friend is there, not a huge surprise as we discussed our future travel plans in Saigon. At one point he drunkenly heaves my copy of On the Road across the room because I'm not hitchhiking around America right now, or something. Even though I've read it years ago, I need it back because I've been using it as an address book for people I meet in the restaurant. Soon it's being passed around and other people are tearing off blank pages at the end to exchange contact info with each other. I get the book back, and know that I'll be keeping this copy for a long time.
A few seconds ago: I read over this entry, and those last three days of extreme fatigue start to make sense. Even so, I still hope to have the strength to celebrate the first day of spring by climbing a nearby mountain.
Now: I look to my left. I see construction, scaffolding, sparks and motorbike after motorbike zooming by. I think of my last day in the jungle, sitting by the river, watching butterflies float by, their wings supposedly orchestrating the symphonies of our lives.
I wonder if my Finnish friend just lost a sock.
